


Fading to Sand

by Saki101



Series: Other Experiments [22]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Alternate Reality, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-17
Updated: 2012-06-17
Packaged: 2017-11-07 23:19:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,547
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/436547
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Saki101/pseuds/Saki101
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John's research for an academic article continues to uncover parts of Sherlock's past, among other things.</p><p>Excerpt:  No note sounded, no footstep fell.  Baker Street was empty, its air flat and sour.  John’s eyes narrowed, sweeping in an arc.  When his neck would turn no farther, he turned his body to complete the circle.  His head spun.  The walls leaned closer and their colours faded to sand.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fading to Sand

**Author's Note:**

> This is a continuation of [The Other Experiments Series](http://archiveofourown.org/series/15644) which forms an AU frame for _The Experiments Series_ which begins with [Zygomata](http://archiveofourown.org/works/331460). _Fading to Sand_ follows directly after [Blood Samples](http://archiveofourown.org/works/425322).

John’s feet had turned towards Baker Street instinctively, but home wasn’t working for him. He glared at the bullet holes in the wall, kicked aside the cushion that had fallen off the chair as he paced back to the kitchen, opened the refrigerator, slammed the door shut and stalked back to the sitting room.

No note sounded, no footstep fell. Baker Street was empty, its air flat and sour. John’s eyes narrowed, sweeping in an arc. When his neck would turn no farther, he turned his body to complete the circle. His head spun. The walls leaned closer and their colours faded to sand.

***** 

Sherlock had been standing over a crumpled body, letting his breath settle when he tilted his head to listen. Rain pattered on the tin roof. A train roared past. A chain slithered from a beam, clanked to the floor. Sherlock reached down and slipped a phone from the dead man’s coat pocket. 

“Willing to discuss terms now,” Sherlock wrote and one corner of his mouth lifted. He added the address and the man’s name and sent the text to Lestrade’s old friend at Interpol before wiping off his prints and slipping the phone under the man’s outstretched hand. Sherlock paused, knees still bent, head cocked to one side. He stood, pulling his mobile from his coat as he turned. The flight reservation was made before he jumped down from the disused loading dock and pulled his collar up against the rain. 

**** 

Sherlock opened the door into Mrs Hudson’s kitchen. He could hear the telly in the sitting room, Mrs Turner stifling a gasp at the contrived suspense. He was out in the hallway a moment later, the sounds of the programme muffled when he closed the door. Sherlock took a deep breath, avoiding the creaky step as he mounted the stairs.

 _John._ Sherlock surveyed the room, returning to the form on the floor curled around the Union Jack pillow. He filled his lungs, held the air for a moment, his hand reaching towards an inside pocket. He let the breath out slowly as he checked the syringe.

Sherlock pushed John’s collar aside easily, slipped the needle under the skin, depressing the plunger halfway before drawing it out, recapping it. John twitched, clutched the pillow more tightly. Exact weight needed to be ascertained for the proper dosage. Sherlock stepped away, closed the shutters, spread his trench coat over the sofa, beige lining open on the cushions, brown scarf shoved into the space between them.

John rolled onto his back, sighing, pillow caught in the crook of his arm. The lines on his face were relaxing. Sherlock bent down, rested his hand on John’s forehead, noted the distended belt hole in the middle of his belt buckle. John took another deep breath. _A few more minutes will suffice._

****** 

Sherlock moved efficiently through the flat, nostrils flaring, eyes darting, fingertips gliding. His deductions weren’t comforting. John collapsed on the floor was rather obviously not comforting. And Sherlock's next absence was likely to be even longer. Sherlock opened the window in the kitchen a couple centimetres. The atmosphere would be different when John awoke. Fresh air was a reasonable explanation.

In his bedroom he closed the curtains, switched on the bedside lamp, noted the hollow in the pillow. He slipped off his shoes and socks by the bed, opened the wardrobe, found another white shirt, hung the one he had on in its place. He didn’t do the same with the trousers, the cut was too different from his usual style. He lay down on the bed, positioning his head in the hollow John’s had left. After a few seconds, he turned over and breathed in, his hand sliding over the coverlet. _There was no data, John, nothing to indicate that separation would be this physically difficult._

****** 

Mike held the plastic flap open for Sherlock to look at the gaping hole in the roof. 

“Where is it?” Sherlock said, ducking under the covering and kneeling by the closest edge.

“In the large room off the morgue,” Mike replied, following Sherlock. “The organic material is still liquefying. The steel strut appears unaffected.” 

Sherlock took a pencil from his pocket and poked at the edge. He held it up for Mike to see the tar clinging to it. “They didn’t do a very careful job,” he remarked, moving along the perimeter to the spot Mike had described, where Moriarty’s outstretched hand had lain.

“The edges were dry and hard, Sherlock. I checked after the removal.”

Sherlock was swirling the pencil easily through the roof surface several centimetres from the edge. “What time was that?”

“About a half hour after dinner, around eight o’clock,” Mike said.

Sherlock straightened, turned towards the exit. “Do you know where John was?”

Mike shook his head. “He said he was tired, didn’t think he’d do any research.” 

Sherlock lifted an eyebrow. “You didn’t see him go?” 

“No, I went to check on Molly.”

Sherlock swooped down and then up again on the other side of the plastic. He stared at the portion of the library dome visible from where they stood. Mike followed the direction of Sherlock’s gaze. “He came back here last night before he went home,” Sherlock said, holding up the tar-smeared pencil. Half a white shirt button gleamed in the black.

“The stairs are blocked,” Mike said.

“It wouldn’t be difficult to come down from the balcony around the dome,” Sherlock said. “It’s not that far above roof level." 

******** 

“Take more,” Sherlock said.

“No,” Mike replied, drawing out the needle. Sherlock looked up from the spot Mike was swabbing on his arm, met Mike’s gaze. “You’re not going to stay more than a day or two, you know it. And if you collapse out there…” Mike jerked his head to the side and back. “You said yourself you need strength for this.”

Sherlock rubbed both his hands up his face and into his hair. “John made the connection. He was searching for it when your student saw him down on the footpath. You know that’s what it was. There was no mishap with pocket change,” Sherlock said, getting up, striding to the end of the lab table and turning, one hand pressed against the table top to steady himself. Mike raised an eyebrow. “Yes, fine, but what then? I don’t know how long I’ll be gone.” 

Mike considered Sherlock, eyes dropping from his face to his shoes and back. “Hair? Skin?”

“I did what I could at the flat,” Sherlock said. “Used his towels, before and after a shower. Used his toothbrush, his razor. Left some worn clothes behind.”

“Isn’t he going to notice those?” Mike said.

Sherlock rolled his eyes, gestured with the hand that wasn’t on the table. “Not in the middle of the floor, Mike. Under the bed, in the wardrobe. But how long is that going to last?” 

“We’re extrapolating from so little information,” Mike said. “And the roof, God, I wasn’t expecting that.”

Sherlock's eyebrows rose. “No,” he agreed.

Mike shook his head and sighed. “I’ll order some food, Sherlock. You need to eat and sleep.”

Sherlock grimaced and sat on the nearest stool. Mike picked up the landline. “If they have the spaghetti Bolognese again today, I don’t want it,” Sherlock said. “And don’t let John eat it. It never agrees with him.”

**** 

Sherlock pushed the tray a few inches away, eyes on his mobile. Mike looked up. “I’ll be in my rooms. I may have to stay another night. John needs to be here. Call and remind him of the research if necessary, he may find the flat more appealing than he has recently. It would be unwise for me to go to Baker Street again.” The fact that going once had been imprudent was left unsaid.

**** 

John had barely heard it, but the memory of the sound made every muscle loosen. 

There was a slight draft, cool, sweet. John didn’t recall opening the window or getting into bed. He inhaled the freshness lazily and turned into the pillow. _Sweeter still._ He drifted back to sleep.

****** 

Sherlock set the computer on the table next to his feet and pushed his fingertips against his eyes. Needing to sleep was annoying, especially with John’s shift due to be over in a couple hours. Instead of his eyelids, Sherlock felt John’s skin beneath his fingertips.

It had been clear when he hooked his arms under John’s and slid him across the carpet that John had lost weight, bloated stomach aside. Sherlock had administered only half of what remained in the syringe. He wanted John to have as few side effects when he awoke as possible. Sherlock snorted. _A little grogginess from too much sedative…_ Sherlock continued pressing lightly against the ache behind his eyes. _If we survive this, are you ever going to forgive me for what I’ll have done to you?_

John had seemed small laid out on the bed. Sherlock had leaned down, slipped off John’s belt, unbuttoned his collar and one cuff, the other cuff already open, its button missing. Sherlock traced a line from John’s forehead down to his jaw. Even with his muscles slack from the drug, the effects of anxiety and little sleep were evident on his face. “I didn’t foresee how hard this part would be, John,” he had whispered and John’s head had tilted towards Sherlock’s hand. He could feel a low hum in John’s throat, see his eyes moving beneath the closed lids. Sherlock bent lower and kissed John’s eyelids, his cheeks, brushed against his mouth. The hum grew louder and John’s hands flexed against the coverlet. Sherlock unknotted the sash of his dressing gown, took one of John’s hands and pressed it against his bare hip. John’s fingers had gripped instinctively.

****** 

John gritted his teeth as the last passenger squeezed into the car and the doors shut. The carriage swayed when the train pulled away from the platform. John craned his neck and caught a glimpse of the large clock by the stairs. There would be enough time to check the exhibit at the Wellcome Institute before it closed. Darkness slid by the windows. He just wanted to go home.

Instead, John was working through a list of possible explanations for his symptoms as he made his way through the commuters flowing past him towards Euston Station. Tropical diseases had more or less been discounted by the time the security guards handed him back his bag just inside the entrance to the institute. The dead air in the dim exhibition rooms brought allergens to mind. John peered in the lit glass cases until he found the 18th century surgical implements he had come to see. He pulled out his notebook, made quick sketches of the hinge on the forceps and the handles on the bone saws and tried to ignore the travelling anatomical model, painted like a child’s doll, with legs splayed and abdomen wall removed to show the full-term foetus inside. The aesthetic of macabre carnival hastened his exit. 

****** 

John stopped in the corridor to check the time on his phone and saw the text from Mike. John was pushing the send button on his reply when the double doors at the end of the hallway rattled open, disgorging a hoard of secondary school-aged students. John pressed himself up against the wall to let them pass.

“Dr Watson, I’m guessing,” a softly-accented voice said.

John looked up, saw the extended arm and the lab coat before he reached the sharp, black eyes trained on him. He pushed away from the wall and shook the offered hand. “Yes, John Watson,” John replied, as a second large hand came up to join the first around his.

“Antoine Bertrand. Mike said you might stop by today.” The dark eyes flicked towards the doors to the exhibition for an instant. “You didn’t like it,” he added. 

“No, no. It was very interesting. I saw what I came to see,” John said, his hand still engulfed by Dr Bertrand’s soft palms.

One of Dr Bertrand’s hands moved to pat John on the forearm before he slowly released his hold on John’s hand. “You are not a good liar, Dr Watson, but I appreciate the effort,” Dr Bertrand said, turning and gesturing towards a door on the opposite side of the corridor. His other arm settled across John’s back. “It is perhaps a little sensationalistic, but it serves its purpose,” he continued, as he propelled John along with him. “I have similar instruments you can examine. Only a small selection are on public display, of course,” he added as he opened the door to an office lined with glass cabinets and bookshelves and indicated one of the chairs in front of a large oak desk. “Mike mentioned your research. I look forward to reading your article.”

John sat and the man patted his shoulder before he moved to a cabinet, opened a wide drawer and took out a battered, mahogany box inscribed with ornate initials. He set it on the edge of the desk, settled in the chair next to John’s and lifted the lid. “An itinerant surgeon’s tools,” he said as John reached out for the nearest saw nestled in the worn velvet. “Presented to impress the patient,” Bertrand commented.

“Or make him faint,” John remarked, hefting the implement, fitting his fingers through the wooden handle. It felt good. He touched a fingertip to the steel teeth and drew it quickly away.

“Still sharp,” Dr Bertrand said.

John resisted an urge to say, _obviously._

“Sherlock liked to use that set,” Bertrand continued. John looked up quickly. “ _Now_ you are interested, Dr Watson.”

“You know,” John paused and considered correcting the tense, “Sherlock?”

“Tutored him as a boy before he went up to university,” Dr Bertrand said. “First time his grandfather brought him over for one of my revision lectures, like the one you saw the students leaving today...” John’s eyes were fixed on the older man’s face. Dr Bertrand glanced at the door and smiled. “…Sherlock left after a few minutes. I found him in here later.” Dr Bertrand stroked the desk. “He’d called up my notes on the computer and rewritten them. I still use that version.”

John's eyes darted to the empty chair behind the desk and back to Bertrand. “Yes, well, I wouldn’t have imagined," John stopped to swallow, "Sherlock needing tutoring for his schoolwork.” John had hoped for a neutral tone, but his resentment of the snowy-haired man knowing things about Sherlock that he didn't, had tightened his throat. Bertrand continued to regard John. His expression reminded John of Sherlock. They both had eyes that saw secrets. John shifted in his chair. 

“Oh, Sherlock was never at school. His grandfather and other staff at the medical college taught him until he went up to Cambridge at fourteen,” Bertrand said, watching the information sink into John as water into sand.

John’s forehead furrowed and Dr Bertrand raised an eyebrow. “Last year, I met an acquaintance of Sherlock’s, same age as him, who said they were at uni together. Sherlock didn’t correct him.”

“Sherlock was doing his doctoral work by then,” Dr Bertrand said, getting up and opening another drawer. “Here, have a look at these, 14th century, Moorish.”


End file.
